Poem of the week

Kerry Hardie

All day, in the garden, the day cold, the forget-me nots
in a blue stretch, the nettles springing
the boundary wall, the sheep beyond
in the clean light.

All day, in the garden, we struggle,
like great blind winds
rushing,
meeting, lifting like water into the air.

What is this furious
colliding? Could there ever
be love in such rage? Yet the garden
makes love seem possible,
the garden,
quiet, unheeded,
un-bitters our words.

Between impacts, we drop back.
He, to the spade and the sprouting peas,
I, to the weedy flower beds of the upper garden. 

When we are too weary
for working or fighting
we go in from the spring dusk,
I hold my hands under a hard jet,
I scrub at the lodged mud
that runs off the smooth planes
and clings in the pits and folded places,
obstinate as small lodged stars
in the creases of the sky, obstinate
as love.